That Call
by Nightwitch87
Summary: There was one type of phone call he never wanted to get. This was it. Disclaimer: I don't have any rights to the Law and Order: SVU franchise and I am merely writing this for entertainment, non-profit purposes.
1. Chapter 1

**That Call**

The ring simply annoyed him at first. It came at an inconvenient time, as it usually did, while he was frying some onions and chopping other vegetables at the same time, keeping the potatoes from boiling over and getting mildly irritated with some guy on the radio rambling on about the pros and cons of gun control. He briefly debated ignoring it and calling back later, but the ring was persistent, distracting him from his tasks, kicking him into his old habit of constant availability. He glanced at the display. An unfamiliar number, a local landline. It better not be that cable guy again, who inexplicably kept calling his cell instead of the house phone. He turned down the stove, removed the frying pan from the heat and switched off the radio.

"Hello?"

"Hey, El." The familiar voice hit him completely off-guard.

"Fin?!" He couldn't recall ever receiving a call from him. Ever, except for work. They hadn't exactly been close. It had been what, two years now? "Wow...how are you?"

"Uh, all right. Listen, is now a good time to talk?" His voice sounded odd, somehow off. Something was very wrong about this. No polite return question?

"Yeah, what's up?"

"You're not driving or anything?" This wasn't right.

"No. Why?"

"I got some bad news."

Oh no. Oh no, this couldn't be it, the phone call he had dreaded his entire working career. It just couldn't be. Not now. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not meant to say anything, but I didn't want you findin' out from the news."

"Fin, just tell me! You- what happened?" _Who is it? Please, God, don't let anyone be dead. They didn't get shot. Don't let it be her. _Fin had never been one to beat around the bush. So it was serious.

A pause. "It's Liv."

He sank into a kitchen chair. All the air had just been knocked out of his lungs. _This isn't real._ His mind was stalling. _It's one of those nightmares again. Go on, wake yourself up. If you don't turn off the stove, you'll burn down the house. _"Is she-"

"No! I mean, we don't- we don't know exactly."

_What was the last real thing, real for sure? Making lunch? Work? Waking up on the sofa? Maybe I didn't wake up._ "What happened? Where is she?"

"We were after this perp - a psychopath, tortured and killed women in different states but always got away. It was bad, a real bad case. We got him, but he got off in court. He walked, fucking bastard! And we...he...got her."

"What do you mean 'got her'?" He felt a horrible chill run down his spine. The radio in the corner was real. The six o'clock news had been real. "Are you talking about the 'man without fingertips'?!"

"Yes. He went after one of his lawyers years ago and he showed an interest when Olivia interviewed him. But not to the point where you'd expect-"

"When did you last see her?" His mind seemed to race, outrunning the fearful beat of his pulse. "She's not in her apartment? Did you locate her cell? Did you-"

"No one's seen her." Fin sounded sad, more resigned than usual, and this scared Elliot more than anything. He was supposed to be out there, knocking down doors. "We're looking, but so far, no clues. Half the NYPD is on it, but no one knows where he took her."

_"The 61-year-old victim was found in her apartment, heavily injured and tied to the bed. At this point, the perpetrator had raped and tortured her at gunpoint for 18 hours, apparently using various household objects to 'brand' her." _His fingernails were digging into his thighs as he tried to organise his thoughts. "Did you go to her apartment yourself?"

"Yeah." Fin muttered. "It was a mess. There was..." For the first time, his voice faltered. "..blood and signs of struggle. Lots of blood. They must have been there a while. The forensic team are still on it."

The thought of blood, her blood all over the place, made him sick. He couldn't bring himself to ask how much blood it had been. "The neighbours-"

"We've interviewed them, been inside all their-"

"The basement!"

"Searched it."

"The roof!"

"Been there-"

"Listen to me, there's this alcove in her basement. It's not easy to see, behind a bunch of old furniture and other crap." Crap he had once helped her move out of there years ago when she was getting rid of her mother's old belongings. He remembered her face then, hardened, the anger she had shown at her mother for dying, her unwillingness to discuss it with him. "It's large enough for...for..." He couldn't say it.

"We saw it. Nothing. She's not in that building anymore."

"The last victim's place! All the past crime scenes!"

"We've checked there-"

"How did this happen?! How did he- how could she-"

"I don't know. I'm sorry, man."

"There has to be a link!" He realised he was yelling at Fin, unfairly so, but something inside him couldn't help irrationally blaming him. And yes, Fin was probably doing enough of that blaming himself, but they were supposed to look out for each other. He was supposed to have her back. Something had to have gone wrong here. There couldn't be no reason for this. "Look at the file! Perps like that guy, they don't act randomly, it's not his MO, he has a pattern-"

"I know."

"He'd take her somewhere that makes sense to him."

"I know!"

"Look at the record, listen to the interview, there's got to be something-"

"Elliot, stop! Just for one sec, stop, okay! What do you think we've been doing for the past 24 hours? Don't you think we'd look everywhere, and look again, and check every fucking shred of evidence there is?!" Now Fin was the one who was yelling, and he could hear the exhaustion and desperation in his voice. "We're all in this, not just you!"

He couldn't feel sorry for them, not right now. But he had to stop badgering Fin or he'd shut down. He didn't have to be giving him all this information. "I know, I'm not saying- it's been 24 hours, right?"

"Since we found out."

His throat felt constricted, as if something were pressing down on his windpipe. What if she'd been held in her apartment at first, and no one had noticed? What if she'd been in there, suffering, for days? "How long since you last saw her?"

"She had a couple days off after Tuesday. But Cassidy came by on Wednesday and-"

"Cassidy? Brian Cassidy?" He couldn't process the information.

"Yeah. She's been seeing him. Been a few months now, I think."

Been seeing him. His brain still couldn't seem to put together the words. He realised he hadn't actually spoken to Olivia in months. Not one phone call from him since Christmas. And now Cassidy...but it hardly mattered, not right now. Why hadn't he called her? What had been the last thing she'd said to him? He couldn't remember. "What exactly..." The toughest question. "What did you find?"

Fin hesitated again. "Like I said. When Rollins- when me and my partner went there, she wasn't there, but the place was turned upside down." He could tell Fin was sparing him the details. Which meant it had to have been brutal.

"I have to get in." Cold sweat was running down the back of his shirt.

"No! There's no way they'd let you."

"Like I care!"

"Seriously, there's no point, it'd just...it's not pretty. There's nothin' to see."

"A pair of fresh eyes can't-"

"_Listen_ to me, there's no point keeping forensics from their work and starting trouble. We're not getting information that way. Do you want to cut us off?"

"Of course not." This was frustrating. He wanted to run out and search for her, to do things. But he had to see the last place where she'd been, the last objects she had touched, the last traces of her... Fin was right, though, they would never let him. But he would go anyway, once the forensic team was done and the crime scene was closed off. What had been his last words to her? "Who's in charge of the investigation?"

"Captain Jennings down at 53rd. Officially, we're not on the case, but Cragen doesn't care."

"Inofficially?"

"Lieutenant Gonzalez is feeding information to Amar- to one of us. We're all looking. Already located the perp's prior connections. My partner headed over to Boston today to talk to an ex again."

"How can I help?" He tried not to sound too anxious, too eager. Fin had to believe in his ability to control himself, or he would never let him near the case. He couldn't sit around at home and wait. His head was still spinning. Wet smoke was beginning to fill up the kitchen. The potatoes had boiled over. _If you don't turn off the stove, you'll burn down the house._ He got up and turned all the knobs to zero, removing the pot from heat. Somehow, it seemed important to hold on to reality. One step at a time.

"You can't do much, but...you're not in the force anymore, so I don't know."

"What do you need me to do?" Anything, no matter what would be asked of him, he would do it without a second thought. He would jump. He would bring her back. _If I keep my end of this deal, she'll be okay. If I do whatever is asked of me, everything will be fine._ Foolish trades with God, which had never worked before, ways of clinging to the illusion that he could stave off the worst. Bargains he'd never kept before. _If Kathy comes back to me, I'll never disappoint her again; I'll work less. If Kathy and the baby make it, I'll never neglect her again. If Kathleen gets through this, I'll do whatever it takes to get her back on track. _

"The problem is, we got no leads. None of the old locations checked out and the cars are being searched." There it was again, this note of defeat.

"Can you get me a copy of her interview with that bastard?"

Fin hesitated. "I don't know, man, I don't think that's a-"

"Please..." He couldn't think of a good rationale for it.

"I'll get it. But we've listened to it a dozen times, there's nothing...I guess you never know."

"We'll find her."

"El, I-"

"We'll find her alive!"

"Yeah." A moment's silence passed, the unthinkable alternative lingering between them. It was as if thinking the unthinkable made it more likely to happen. If it became thinkable, it became possible. It was safer, then, to keep it in the realm of unknown possible outcomes.

Fin cleared his throat. "Look, I'm sorry, but I gotta get back to- I'll call you when I get the file."

"Call me if there's news?"

"Yeah."

"Any news, okay, even if it's just- even if it doesn't seem to matter."

"I'll keep you posted. I just didn't want you to find out from the news."

"Thank you." He hung up, standing frozen for a moment, unable to do anything. "Talk to you soon." That was the last thing she had said.


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm so sorry. Anything I can do? El. _That had been all he had found the courage to type. It had been nerve wrecking, and he had stared down at his screen for a solid two minutes before pressing "send", and had spent the next ten minutes convincing himself that she would most likely ignore it, that she had probably changed her number anyway, that the last thing she wanted at this time was a lame text message from her ex-partner. She would see through it, without a doubt, and recognize that he was too much of a coward to call, no matter how much he tried to make it into something noble and respectful by telling himself that he was giving her space and control because texting left the decision up to her. Even Kathy had scolded him more than once over the last year for never once making a courtesy call to ask how Olivia was doing, had told him that that was what friends did –was that what they had been? Friends?- and that it was wrong to abandon someone in a crisis. Kathy was his conscience, the one in this marriage who did things properly, but she didn't understand. "No one knows what to say in these situations" she had tried to assure him. "But you try, you do simple stuff like bring food, that's what people do." She didn't get how wrong it would have been, how inappropriate after three years, how potentially unsettling…how terrifying to him.

So he had decided to be the bad guy here, to not be there, to pretend it didn't happen. Until that fateful news break had come on, that humiliating televised confession shortly followed by coverage on Lewis' suspicious death. And despite the worries, the mental images it put in his head, he had felt a tinge of triumph for her over killing that bastard, as she might or might not have done. This was one thing he would never be able to ask her.

And here he was, sitting in a coffee shop unknown to him, stirring sugar into his coffee. He never, ever drank his coffee sweet, but he needed something to do, something to occupy his hands while he waited. He glanced at his watch: ten minutes past. This wasn't a coincidence. She probably wouldn't show up. Her response to his text had been surprisingly prompt, coming on the same evening. _Not over the phone. Meet me for coffee tomorrow, lunch time?_ He hadn't expected that. Face to face, for the first time since he had left. They had exchanged Christmas calls a couple of times, but nothing beyond that, and not even that in the last year. He stirred his coffee again vigorously, removing the little wooden stick and putting it down on a napkin to avoid staining the table.

And here she was, when he looked up, just standing in front of him all of a sudden, arms hanging loosely at her sides, not saying a word. He hadn't seen her come in. "Liv…" His breath caught in his throat and he stood up abruptly. There was nothing he could say. What did you say after three years? She looked good, great actually, dressed more feminine than he remembered in a business-like way, her semi-short hair styled into soft waves at the bottom.

"Sit" she instructed him, not wavering in the least as she did the same.

It was this command that reassured him, that finally hit it home to him that she was here, that this was still her, the same person. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but he was glad that she didn't look broken somehow, that she clearly wasn't some fragile shell of her former self. And he suddenly felt stupid, incredibly stupid. "Do you want something to drink?" It was the first question he could think of.

"No." She looked at him expectantly, and he could see the tension in her jaw, in the muscles of her neck, the way she sat up perfectly straight and refused to let her expression betray anything. She was doing this on purpose. She didn't need to. He didn't want to be a disruptive force in her life.

"I'm…" Glad you came? Sorry I didn't contact you sooner? Sorry I bothered you? Happy you're alive? Worried about you? An asshole? "…it's good to see you."

A crease began to appear between her eyebrows. "Why now?"

"I saw you on TV and, you know, what happened, and…I'm sorry. For everything you've been through."

"Wow." She shook her head, breaking eye contact to look out the window at the busy street, and he could see that what she was struggling to contain was rage, pure, unabated rage. "I don't know what I was expecting, but thanks for the text? I guess that helps, a year later."

"I didn't want to-"

"Bullshit. You know what, don't explain, I don't-"

"I wanted to see you."

"-care. Well, now you have. I'm alive."

"I see that." He took a deep breath. He needed to know. "Did you want to talk to me? After?"

She crossed her arms, staring off into space for a moment. "I don't know. I wanted you to try. Even when you didn't right away, but maybe later, when the trial came round, hell, there were so many times when you could have called. Twelve years, and you couldn't make one phone call?"

Why was it so hard to apologize? "I thought about it all the time. But I was scared" he admitted, and the second he said it, he could see it had been the wrong thing so say, born out of a selfish need for forgiveness.

"Scared?" She leaned forward. "Hm, I'm sorry all of this was so scary _for you_."

He shrugged, deciding to take her anger if venting was what she had come for. "Fair enough. But you made it. You're the strongest person I know."

This seemed to be the first comment she hadn't prepared a response to. She took her arms off the table. "You don't owe me anything. We were partners once, and now we're not."

"Why did you come today?" To tell him to go to hell in person? Probably.

She glanced out the window again, a strange blankness in her face, and the frequency with which she did that, switching from anger to complete detachment, unsettled him. Something was off about her after all, different about her. A lot could happen in all this time, but she wasn't completely unreadable to him. "Curiosity" she stated simply.

"Can I ask you how you're doing, or is that a dumb question?"

"It is a dumb question. But you can. Just don't expect me to cry on your shoulder."

"Never." It was the last thing she would ever do, he knew. When she didn't speak, he decided to ask again directly. "How are you?"

"How do you think? Things are…" she sighed, "…different than they used to be."

"Different how?"

"I don't even know how to explain it to you. I've moved. I have a shrink now, can you believe it?" She smiled bitterly, trying to shrug it off. "Just different."

The years between them were palpable now. Things were different, different in a way that could never be adequately captured by simple external facts. They had never needed many words in the old days. Now, words were all they had left to communicate. And already, he had nothing to say in response. A perky promise that everything would be all right again would be a weak lie.

"But the worst is over." Her voice turned quieter as they broached the subject. "He's dead. You'd think that would close that chapter, but it turns out it doesn't."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I'm here now."

"I know." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "The answer's still no."

He felt a pang of guilt at his own relief about her decline. He didn't think he was ready to listen to her that way. He didn't want to imagine the horrors she had been through, any more than he already did. He didn't want confirmation. "You want to punch someone?"

That earned him a genuine smile from her, however fleeting. "Don't tempt me."

"So do you have…people?" He didn't know what exactly he was asking, but the stark fact that she had no family stood out to him again, however much she might reject his pity.

"Or did I spend the past year sitting at home alone in a dark apartment, wondering when you'd call? No." She was so guarded.

"Cassidy still around?" he asked casually.

Her face hardened. "What the hell? How do you know that?"

"I'm not stalking you or anything."

"How?" she insisted sharply.

"Fin."

"Fin?!"

"Am I not allowed to talk to him now?" Apparently, he had just gotten someone into trouble.

"Not about my…since when are you talking to Fin?"

"Only one time. And I didn't ask, it just came up."

"It's none of your business!" she exclaimed. "You have no right…"

"Fine" he replied, irritated that a question that was supposed to be innocuous had sent things spiraling south. At least they were arguing and not sitting in awkward silence. "I take it back."

"Oh, don't just assume."

"What?"

"You're making assumptions based on old information. You don't know him, you don't know me. Things are different."

"I'm not assuming anything." It was an odd pairing to think about, although, to be fair, he didn't remember too much of Brian Cassidy –and the things he did remember weren't flattering- and couldn't even picture it. But if she had found someone, if she wasn't alone in the middle of all this, good for her.

"He was good, and patient, and there throughout the whole thing." Was – past tense.

He didn't know what to do with this information. Cassidy was clearly a subject off limits for him, a touchy subject, but he was getting mixed messages here. "Like you said, it's none of my business."

"No, it damn well isn't" she reinforced, the anger in her voice slowly receding, "but here we are."

"Here we are." There were many things he wanted to say, other justifications he felt he had to offer for not supporting her, for walking out on her the way he had done, for not giving them any sort of closure. However, looking at her now, it would be inappropriate to go for it. His own reasons didn't seem to matter so much. A finality had long been reached, to the extent that it could ever be reached, in relation to who they had once been to each other, and who they were to each other now.

She seemed to be thinking along the same lines, deliberating her words, almost opening her mouth to speak, then dropping whatever she had intended to say.

"I'm sorry" he mumbled again, not sure what he was referring to anymore. He wished he was better at this stuff. An ex-SVU detective, and all he had to say about this mess was "sorry"?

"I know."

They were interrupted by her phone buzzing. She took it out, glanced at it with a frown, then looked back at him. "I-"

"Duty calls?"

"Yeah" she smiled wanly. "Sorry."

"No problem." Part of him wanted her to stay, but another, undeniable part, was relieved at this natural end to their conversation. He got up from his chair as she stood up, and he realized that she hadn't taken off her coat the entire time.

She hesitated for a moment, looking straight at him across the table. "I'm glad you texted."

He nodded lightly, holding her gaze until she broke it. "Me too."

"See you." It was an indefinite goodbye, an acknowledgement of the vague possibility of meeting again more than anything else. She turned around quickly and left without another word.

He watched her go, sitting down again and only noticing now that his coffee had turned cold.


End file.
